Padres bloggin' since 2007

Any Fangraphs junkies out there may have noticed the site recently added a Multiple Season filter to their stats section. With this, I thought I’d go through the years and fill out the titular Padres roster using WAR.

Of course, this isn’t a perfect measure. Since UZR only dates back to 2002, all WAR are not created equal back to 1969. Luckily, Baseball Reference uses Total Zone for their defensive stats, which is more even, if less comprehensive, through the decades. Even with these two stats, things weren’t perfect, so with a combination of frog DNA and my own Padres knowledge, I filled in the gaps as best I could. This is the result.

1. Fernando Valenzuela – nostalgic and was great at home.
2. Scott Linebrink – Solid for Hoffy
3. Greg Harris – solid for Mark Davis
4. Craig Lefferts – before Davis there was Goose
5. Akinore Otsuka – love that commercial he did for Corky’s and nails on the mound.

Benito was very hit or miss at the plate. In his three years in San Diego, his wRC+ was above 100 three times and below three times, but it was in the 80s three times. And while Sheffield was brilliant in his short time as a Padre, he just wasn’t better than Cammy.

Fingers is a Hall of Famer, but there’s only so much room on this roster and I’m not sure who I would’ve bumped to make space for him. And as far as Perry’s concerned, it wouldn’t have felt right to put two rent-a-pitchers in the starting rotation and Brown’s 98 was just better than Perry’s 78.

Finley was a great offensive center fielder, but it’s less clear how good he was defensively. Total Zone, for one, put him at -57 for his time in San Diego. Kotsay wasn’t Finley’s equal offensively, but he was much much steadier defensively. Kevin McReynolds was actually my runner up.

There wasn’t a lot of space between the three second baseman. Fangraphs’ WAR has a run and a half between them and Baseball Reference’s only has half. I went with Loretta starting because he had the best single-season of the three and I went with Bip on the bench for his versatility.

If this was the All-Star game and I could carry 33 players, Alomar would definitely be on the team.

Say! Where ARE you guys? Did everybody move to South America? There have been trades, signings, arbitration hearings avoided, and pitchers and catchers report in less than 30 days. Here we readers are, parched for analysis. Come back, guys, come back!